I had the opportunity to meet Karla last year on one of my trips to Spain. My interview preview will give you a little background on our meeting. Karla is a fascinating person, a painter, writer and generally a creative person, but also an entrepreneur with an alternative flair. This is what she has to say about her experience as an American expatriate living in Spain.
1. Tell us a little about your background. Where did you grow up, what is your educational background and what were you doing before moving to Spain?
I was born in Toronto and raised in a small provincial town called Bowmanville, just east of Toronto. I returned to Toronto after high school and attended Humber College in Rexdale where I studied creative arts including fashion design, photography, and writing. After college, I opened my first company, a boutique in Toronto’s trendy Queen St. area, selling weird and wonderful art.
I sold that business in 1983 and went to the University of Waterloo where I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with honors. I graduated in 1990 and started my second company, called Zona Communications. It was a communications company, and I jumped on the Internet with both feet. I then built my first Internet company, which I sold to a California company in 2000. I lived in sunny Southern California after my company was sold, until the New York World Trade Center tragedy in September 2001.
I packed up and went back to Bowmanville. Then 10 days later I packed up some items and flew to Zurich, Switzerland and married my long time Spanish boyfriend who had been working in Zurich for 8 years. We packed up his apartment and in December 2001, Christmas, we moved to Spain.
2. You now live on the Costa Blanca in Spain. How long have you lived there and what motivated you to move there?
We’ve been here since December 2001. We didn’t know where we were going to live, so the first logical place to go was where José, my husband, Xativa, was born. It is a walled city in the interior of the province of Valencia. We live there for 6 months. We were unemployed and free to travel around Spain as it was our honeymoon. We bought a 4×4 and traveled through mountains and valleys and places that no tourist would think of going.
However, we really wanted to move to the coast, to the sea. We had met in a fishing/holiday town called Jávea, back in 1988, when I was a university student. I came to Spain twice, with student loans, to study art at the Prado in Madrid. Then, I would go to the coast to have fun and go to the beaches.
My Spanish sweetie was a waiter at a fancy little restaurant called – El Solomilllo – right on the beach. We fell into a crazy kind of love and spent two wild summers together. We kept in touch for the next several years through a friend, until the Internet was developed.
When we came to visit Javea from Xativa we met an old friend, Carmelo. He gave my husband a job and we moved to the coast. We now make Benitachell our home, which is only five minutes from Jávea.
3. What is it like to live in Spain? What are the main cultural differences between living in North America and living in Spain? What was the adjustment phase like initially when you moved there?
Spain is an ancient culture, filled with raw passion, tragedy, love, and a fascination with the macabre. It takes some time to get used to the intimate nature of people. They are a nation of huggers and kissers. In North American culture where a handshake is normal to greet people, here in Spain it is a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. This is standard for men and women. No one thinks you’re gay because you’re kissing a member of the same sex. This is a silly idea.
Spain is a noisy country. They have a great love for fireworks. The bikes have no mufflers and roar like great beasts through the streets. People don’t talk to each other, she yells. An American would think that this fight was taking place in a bar when the Spanish set off. But they are not fighting, these are normal communications.
Spain is a dangerous country. Every criminal who flees persecution in his own country comes to Spain. All kinds of mafia are here, Russians, Romanians, Italians, Yugoslavs… Plus all the murderous soldiers left over from some Central European war. Terrorism has been a common scene in Spain thanks to the Basque separatist movement (which learned all it knows from Canada’s FLQ). Every week, an unknown body will turn up dead in a ditch due to some Colombian drug payment that went unpaid.
Drinking and driving in Spain is normal. Death is cheap on the freeways. Every weekend, families say goodbye to their loved ones as the jaws of death scrape the mangled bodies of young and old from a twisted piece of metal that used to be a car. Beer is not considered a dangerous drink, but it does have an alcohol content of 5%. If you need to get one, you can stop by the Drive-Thru window at your nearest McDonalds. Both wine and spirits are dirt cheap in Spain, making it an alcoholic’s dream come true.
Smoking is not prohibited and cigarettes are very cheap. Everyone here starts smoking at a very young age. Women stay slim since they don’t eat, they just smoke. Everyone has black circles under their eyes. The mixture of cheap brandy and cheap cigarettes makes for very smelly people.
4. You have been living in Spain for several years. What places have you seen? What festivals have you experienced? What gastronomic pleasures have you enjoyed?
Our favorite festival is the Fallas Festival in Valencia. We look forward to the first two weeks of March with such passion. It is the most amazing festival both visually and emotionally. The combination of art and fire, noise and danger, everything comes together in this festival.
We have so many favorite foods, like paella and sausages filled with pork and mountain-grown herbs. We love flan and rice pudding. We love all kinds of seafood and fresh vegetables from the market.
5. You are always involved in a variety of activities. Tell us about the various websites you are working on.
My husband and I try to keep all of our important information on our own website – http://www.darocas.com/ – this is where I also keep track of my paintings. Then, I have another website called http://www.spainlifestyle.com/ where I keep my writings and poems and photos of the renovations in our house. Then we have another site called [http://www.spainphotos.net/] where we store our photos of Spanish adventures.
6. In addition to websites, he is also involved in various business organizations. What are they and what is their function?
http://www.palomera.com/ is a website that searches for and monitors what the Spanish business community is doing and we can see business trends.
Last year, I started a business club for women, which has grown and we are actually organizing International Women’s Day. It just goes to show the power of women to make something out of nothing. This is a club of international women who have come to live on this coast. The website is http://www.wibc-spain.com/
7. Obviously both you and your husband have a strong business orientation. He is now also involved in a project involving the development of luxury Canadian cedar homes in Spain. Tell us more about that project.
We both love wooden houses. Houses in Spain are made of cement, so they tend to be cool in summer, which is good, but during winter and storm season, cement houses are damp, cold and sticky. They are always full of cement dust and if they don’t get enough sun they get moldy.
The Spanish do not have a good knowledge of the construction of wooden houses, but many of the immigrants from England, France, Switzerland, Germany, etc. they love their wooden houses. So I met up with some old college friends from Canada who design and build log homes so that I could offer a Canadian cedar log home to the Spanish landscape and market. We are currently working on a project with a Spanish developer to build the first community of wooden houses in Spain. This website is called [http://www.spainloghomes.com/]
8. In addition to your business ventures, you are also an artist. Tell us a bit about your artistic background and the creative endeavors you are currently involved in.
I love painting. He hadn’t done it for many years because he was very involved with the Internet industry. When we moved here, I was very happy to return to my passion and use my skills that I developed at university. Now, I paint to please myself, but paintings sell very easily to people buying new villas or to tourists.
9. Tell us about your expat experience in Spain. Where does the foreign community live, how do they interact, what types of businesses and activities are they involved in, and how has that changed the country?
The coasts of Spain are becoming very international communities. It reminds me of what California and Florida must have been like in the 1960s and 1970s. All the retirees from Northern Europe move to Spain for the sun and sea.
They are bringing their cultural mix and adding it to the Spanish culture. The rest of Spain is also changing, for better and for worse. Now more social reforms are taking place in Spain, for women and for work and social welfare. The new government is young and progressive.
The bad side is that progress is too fast and the natural beauty and landscape is being filled with concrete houses that look like low-cost housing, but as vacation homes are fetching a huge price. This inflation is eating away at the poor in this country and now young Spaniards are facing an era in which they will not be able to buy a home.
10. What advice would you give to someone else who is thinking of moving to Spain?
Do not move to Spain unless you are willing to be flexible. There is nothing stable in this country and perhaps never will be. If you’re rich and can live on a pension and play golf every day, you’ll be fine. If you think you can move to Spain and get a job, forget it. However, if you are an entrepreneur and can see the holes in the market and have the guts and knowledge to fill the hole, you will be fine.
Thank you, Karla, for sharing your views and experiences. I appreciate your insider insights into a culture that has fascinated me for a long time. Good luck with your efforts in Spain!
